Bing Webmaster Tools is free, and it now shows when Microsoft Copilot and Bing’s AI answers cite your pages. Here is how to set it up, what every report tells you, and what to do with it.
- Why Bing Webmaster Tools matters now
- A tour of the dashboard, menu item by menu item
- How to set it up in five steps
- AI Performance: where Copilot cites you
- The June 2026 additions: Intents, Topics, Citation Share, Compare
- Recommendations and the SEO/GEO report
- URL Inspection and Site Scan
- Sitemaps, IndexNow and URL Submission
- Duplicate content and AI answers
- Copilot, Backlinks, Keyword Research and Clarity
- What we found on our own site
- Common myths, sorted from fact
- Your 30-day plan
- Frequently asked questions
- Sources
The Short Answer
Bing Webmaster Tools is Microsoft’s free dashboard for how Bing crawls, indexes and ranks your site, and since February 2026 it also reports how often Microsoft Copilot, Bing’s AI summaries and partner experiences cite your pages. To use it for AI visibility: verify your site, submit a sitemap, turn on IndexNow, fix what Recommendations and URL Inspection flag, and check the AI Performance report monthly. It is a measurement tool, not a ranking guarantee.
Most site owners treat Bing as an afterthought, and that was reasonable for years. However, the question has changed. It is no longer only “do we rank on Bing?” It is also “do AI assistants cite us when someone asks about our topic?” Bing Webmaster Tools is currently the only place Microsoft gives you first-party data on that second question.
This guide covers the whole tool, not just the new AI reports. Each feature below comes from Microsoft’s own documentation, and where we have tested something on our own site, we say so.
1. Why Bing Webmaster Tools Matters Now
Microsoft says Bing powers a wide range of search and AI experiences, including Yahoo, DuckDuckGo and Microsoft Start, and it is built into Edge, Windows and Copilot. As a result, a page that Bing understands well can show up in several places at once, even if your Google traffic is what you watch most closely.
The bigger shift is on the AI side. In February 2026, Microsoft launched AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools, which it describes as an early step toward Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) tooling. For the first time, a major search company gave site owners official data on how often their content is cited in generative answers.
That matters because the data is first-party. Third-party AI-visibility trackers estimate your presence by sending test prompts. Bing’s report, by contrast, comes from Bing’s own citation records for your site.
2. A Tour of the Dashboard, Menu Item by Menu Item
Once your site is verified, the left-hand menu is your map. The table below follows that menu from top to bottom, exactly as it appears in our own account in October 2026. Menus change, so yours may differ slightly. You will not need every item every week.
| Menu item | What it does | Use it when |
|---|---|---|
| Home | The landing page for whichever site you have selected in the dropdown at the top left | Every visit, as a starting point |
| Search Performance | Impressions, clicks and average position by page and query, with up to 16 months of data | Monthly, to spot trends |
| AI Performance (Beta) | Citations of your pages in Copilot, Bing’s AI summaries and partner experiences | Monthly, and the reason many people sign up |
| URL Inspection | Indexing status, crawlability, response codes and on-page SEO/GEO issues for one URL | After publishing or fixing a page |
| Site Explorer | Your site’s structure as Bing sees it, with indexed pages, crawl blocks and errors | When pages seem to be missing |
| Sitemaps | Submit a sitemap and see its status, last read date and errors | Once, then check quarterly |
| IndexNow | Tells Bing instantly when a URL is added, updated or deleted | Always on, if your platform supports it |
| URL Submission | Submit individual URLs to Bing by hand | For an important page that is not showing up |
| Backlinks | Referring domains and anchor text for your site | For link audits |
| Keyword Research | Trending keywords, related queries and long-tail ideas | When planning content |
| Recommendations | A severity-ranked list of SEO/GEO errors, with the pages each one affects | After setup, then monthly |
| Site Scan | Technical audit for broken links, duplicate tags and missing metadata | After site changes |
| Configuration, Tools & Enhancements, Security & Privacy | Three collapsed menu groups for settings and extra tools. Microsoft’s overview lists the Robots.txt Tester and Crawl Control among its tools | Open each group once to see what your account offers |
| User management | Add or remove other people who can see this site’s data | When a teammate or agency needs access |
| Microsoft Clarity | A link to Microsoft’s free visitor-behavior tool, covered below | When you want to see how visitors use a page |
| Copilot icon (top bar) | Built-in assistant for questions about your site’s data | When a report confuses you |
3. How to Set It Up in Five Steps
Setup takes about fifteen minutes. In short, you sign in, prove ownership, and give Bing a way to find your pages.
Sign in
Go to bing.com/webmasters and sign in with a Microsoft, Google or Facebook account. If you already use Google Search Console, Bing lets you import your verified sites directly, which is the fastest route.
Add and verify your site
Click “Add a Site” and enter your URL. Bing offers several ways to prove you own it:
- Domain Connect, where you log in to a supported DNS provider and Bing verifies automatically
- Upload an XML verification file to your site’s root folder
- Add a meta tag to your homepage’s head section
- Add a DNS TXT record at your registrar
- Import from Google Search Console
Turn on IndexNow
IndexNow notifies Bing and other participating search engines the moment you add, update or delete a page. Bing says you can enable it through a supported platform such as Shopify, Wix or Duda, through a plugin, or directly in your site’s code.
Submit your sitemap
Add your XML sitemap under Sitemaps in the tool, or reference it in your robots.txt file. Most CMS platforms and SEO plugins generate one for you. Even with IndexNow on, a sitemap gives Bing the complete picture of your site. You will find both under their own names in the left-hand menu.
Explore the dashboard
Data starts to appear after verification, though it takes some time to build. Open Recommendations first, since it shows the biggest problems by severity. Then run a Site Scan and inspect your homepage and two or three key pages with URL Inspection.
4. AI Performance: Where Copilot Cites You
AI Performance is the headline feature, and it is still labeled Beta in the sidebar. Microsoft describes it as showing how your content appears across Microsoft Copilot, AI-generated summaries in Bing and select partner integrations.
The original February 2026 release reports five things:
| Report | What it shows | What it does not show |
|---|---|---|
| Total Citations | How many times your site was displayed as a source in AI answers during the date range | Where it appeared inside an answer |
| Average Cited Pages | The average number of unique pages from your site cited per day | Ranking, authority or the role of any page |
| Grounding Queries | The key phrases the AI used when retrieving content it cited | Every query, since it is a sample |
| Page-Level Citations | Citation counts for specific URLs on your site | Page importance or placement |
| Visibility Trends | How citation activity changes over time | Clicks or traffic from the citation |
Two details deserve attention. First, Bing explicitly says these numbers do not indicate ranking or authority. Second, the grounding queries are a sample, and Microsoft says it will keep refining that metric.
A citation is not a click. Bing’s report counts how often your pages were displayed as sources, and it does not report visits from those citations. Treat the data as a directional signal, which is how Microsoft frames it.
5. The June 2026 Additions: Intents, Topics, Citation Share, Compare
In June 2026, Microsoft added four more capabilities to AI Performance, available in preview globally. They answer a different question. The original report shows where you are cited, while the new ones help show why and how that is changing.
| Feature | What it does | How to use it |
|---|---|---|
| Intents | Classifies grounding queries into categories such as Informational, Commercial, Navigational, Learn and Solve, Research, Creation and Local | See what kind of questions your pages are being pulled into |
| Topics | Groups related grounding queries into broader themes, so “solar panels” and “residential solar installation” can fall under one Solar Energy topic | Find the subject areas where you have real authority, and gaps |
| Citation Share | The percentage of citations for a given grounding query that went to your site, out of all citations shown for that query | Tell a strong position from a fragmented one |
| Compare | Overlays a previous period on the current view, such as the last 30 days against the 30 before | Check whether a content update coincided with a change |
Microsoft is careful about what these are. Citation Share, for example, is described as an observational metric, not a ranking system or a competitive scoreboard. It does not expose competitor domains, represent traffic share, or score your content’s quality.
In addition, Microsoft notes that Intents and Topics rely on AI classification that is still maturing, so some labels may be broad, especially for niche subjects. Expect them to improve, and avoid over-reading any single label.
What Bing says to do with the data
Microsoft’s guidance is straightforward, and it matches good content practice in general:
- ✓ Strengthen depth and expertise on the topics where you are already being cited
- ✓ Improve structure and clarity with clear headings, tables and FAQ sections
- ✓ Support claims with evidence, such as examples, data and cited sources
- ✓ Keep content fresh and accurate, so AI systems reference the current version
- ✓ Reduce ambiguity across formats, so text, images and video describe the same products and concepts
One outside data point is worth keeping in mind. When CXL checked its own dashboard, its ten most-cited pages also ranked at about position five in organic search on average. That is one site’s experience, not a rule, but it suggests that strong ordinary SEO and AI citation tend to go together.
6. Recommendations and the SEO/GEO Report
Recommendations is where Bing summarizes what it thinks is wrong with your site. At the top you get a ring chart with your total errors, split by severity (High, Moderate and Low), plus a count of how many pages have errors. Below that, an “Error details” table lists each SEO/GEO error type with its severity and the number of pages affected. You can filter by All, High, Moderate or Low.
| What you see | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Total errors, by severity | How big the cleanup is, and how much of it is urgent |
| Total pages with errors | Whether the problems are scattered or concentrated |
| SEO/GEO error type | The specific problem, in plain language |
| Severity | Bing’s own ranking of which to fix first |
| Pages | How many pages each problem touches |
The sensible order is to clear High first, then work through Moderate, and take Low last. A single High error that affects one page is a quick win, while a Moderate error that affects fifteen pages is usually a template problem, and fixing the template fixes them all at once.
The same SEO/GEO findings also appear for individual pages in URL Inspection. We covered that view, including the two flags we hit on our own site, in Bing’s New SEO/GEO Issues Report: What It Flags and What to Fix.
7. URL Inspection and Site Scan
URL Inspection checks one page at a time. You paste a URL, and Bing reports whether it can be indexed, along with response codes and blocked resources, and it also lists on-page SEO/GEO issues by severity. Use it right after you publish or fix something, because it tells you how Bing sees that exact page.
Site Scan works at the other end of the scale. Rather than checking a single URL, it crawls your site and reports technical problems such as broken links, duplicate tags and missing metadata. Run it after any template, theme or plugin change.
8. Sitemaps, IndexNow and URL Submission
Freshness is a recurring theme in Bing’s guidance for AI search. Sitemaps and IndexNow handle it, and they work best together. URL Submission, the third item, is the manual version for a single page.
| Sitemap | IndexNow | |
|---|---|---|
| Purpose | Complete map of your URLs | Instant alert for individual changes |
| Speed | Bing re-reads it regularly, typically at least once a day | Immediate when you submit |
| Best for | Full coverage and structure | New, updated or deleted pages |
| Key detail | Accurate lastmod dates in ISO 8601 format | Supported by participating search engines |
Bing says the lastmod field remains a key freshness signal, and it recommends a full date and time. It also says the changefreq and priority tags are ignored. Furthermore, lastmod should reflect when the page’s content actually changed, not when the sitemap file was regenerated.
You can confirm Bing is reading your sitemap under Sitemaps in the tool. Look for the submission status, the last read date and any processing errors.
9. Duplicate Content and AI Answers
Microsoft’s December 2025 guidance makes a point that applies directly to AI answers. When several pages say nearly the same thing, AI systems may group them into a cluster and pick one to represent the set, and it might not be the one you wanted.
Bing is clear that duplicate content does not trigger a penalty on its own. Rather, it blurs your signals and can slow how quickly updates are reflected. Its Recommendations report can surface potential duplication, such as too many pages with identical titles, and lets you export the affected URLs.
| Cause | Bing’s suggested fix |
|---|---|
| Syndicated copies on other sites | Ask partners for a canonical tag pointing to your original, or syndicate excerpts with a link back |
| Near-identical campaign pages | Pick one primary page, canonicalize or 301 redirect the rest |
| Localized pages with no real differences | Make meaningful changes and use hreflang |
| URL parameters, HTTP and HTTPS, trailing slashes, staging pages | 301 redirects, canonical tags and consistent URLs, and keep staging out of the index |
10. Copilot, Backlinks, Keyword Research and Clarity
The remaining tools are supporting players, but each is worth a look.
Copilot. Since March 2025, Bing Webmaster Tools has included a built-in Copilot assistant for all users. Microsoft lists real-time question-and-answer chat tailored to your site, site-specific data insights, and built-in learning resources. At launch it was available in English only. It is most useful as a translator: when a report shows a number you do not understand, ask Copilot to explain it in the context of your own site.
Backlinks and Keyword Research. Backlinks shows who links to you and with what anchor text, and Keyword Research suggests trending and long-tail queries. Neither is specific to AI, though both help you decide what to write and who to ask for links.
Microsoft Clarity. Clarity appears in the menu as a separate Microsoft product. It shows how real visitors use your pages. That is a different question from the one Bing’s reports answer, so it pairs well with them: Bing tells you who finds you, and Clarity shows what they do next.
11. What We Found on Our Own Site
We run LeafWorldMedia’s own pages through these tools. When we opened Recommendations on October 3, 2026, it listed 18 SEO/GEO errors across 18 pages: 1 High, 15 Moderate and 2 Low. The one High error was “The description is missing in the head section of the page,” and it affected a single page.
Treat any count like that as a snapshot, because it changes as Bing rescans your site. Earlier, our first URL Inspection of a new article had turned up a duplicate H1. Our theme prints each post’s title as an H1, and our article template added a second. Converting the body title to a styled div fixed it without changing how the page looked.
The lesson is a practical one. The tool surfaces issues that are invisible when you look at a page in a browser, and it does so for free.
Common Myths, Sorted From Fact
Bing doesn’t matter because Google sends the traffic.
FactGoogle may send more of it, but Bing’s index feeds Yahoo, DuckDuckGo and Microsoft’s own products according to Microsoft, and Bing Webmaster Tools is where Copilot citation data lives. You can use it without changing anything you do for Google.
AI Performance tells me where I rank in Copilot.
FactBing states that the data does not indicate ranking, authority or a page’s role in an individual answer. It counts citations. Citation Share is also observational, and it is not a ranking or a competitive scoreboard.
IndexNow replaces a sitemap.
FactBing says sitemaps remain a foundational signal for comprehensive URL coverage, and recommends combining them with IndexNow for real-time changes. They do different jobs.
12. Your 30-Day Plan
- ✓ Day 1: Sign in, verify your site (or import it from Google Search Console), and submit your sitemap
- ✓ Day 2: Turn on IndexNow through your platform or a plugin
- ✓ Day 3: Inspect your homepage and top three pages with URL Inspection, and fix any Errors
- ✓ Week 2: Open Recommendations and fix every High error, then run a Site Scan
- ✓ Week 2: Check your sitemap’s last read date under Sitemaps and confirm lastmod values are accurate
- ✓ Week 3: Open AI Performance and note your most-cited pages and top grounding queries
- ✓ Week 4: Use Compare to set a baseline, then improve one cited page’s structure and evidence
- ✓ Monthly after that: Re-check AI Performance, Search Performance and Recommendations, and fix new issues
Overall, the whole routine takes under an hour a month once it is set up. The point is to build a baseline you can compare against, so changes you make become visible instead of guesswork.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Bing Webmaster Tools?
It is Microsoft’s free toolset for site owners. It shows how Bing crawls, indexes and ranks your pages, offers diagnostics such as Recommendations, URL Inspection and Site Scan, and, through AI Performance, reports how often your content is cited in Microsoft Copilot and Bing’s AI answers.
Is Bing Webmaster Tools free?
Yes. Microsoft describes it as free, and it requires only an account and a verified site.
How do I verify my site in Bing Webmaster Tools?
After clicking Add a Site, you can use Domain Connect with a supported DNS provider, upload an XML verification file, add a meta tag to your homepage, add a DNS TXT record, or import the site from Google Search Console. The Search Console import is usually the quickest if you already use it.
What is the AI Performance report?
It is a Beta report that shows when your site is cited as a source in AI-generated answers across Microsoft Copilot, AI summaries in Bing and select partner integrations. It includes total citations, average cited pages, grounding queries, page-level citation counts and trends over time.
What are Intents, Topics, Citation Share and Compare?
They are four preview features added to AI Performance in June 2026. Intents classify grounding queries by type, Topics group them into themes, Citation Share shows the percentage of citations for a query that went to your site, and Compare overlays a previous period on the current one.
Does AI Performance show my ranking in Copilot?
No. Bing says the data does not indicate ranking, authority or the role of a page within an answer. It reports citation activity, and it is best used as a directional signal.
Do I need both a sitemap and IndexNow?
Bing recommends using both. A sitemap gives Bing a full map of your URLs and is re-read regularly, while IndexNow notifies it immediately when individual pages change. Together they support fresh, complete coverage.
Can I control whether Bing uses my content in AI answers?
Bing states that it respects content owner preferences expressed through robots.txt and other supported control mechanisms. Review your robots.txt with the Robots.txt Tester, and check Microsoft’s documentation for the current list of supported controls.
Does duplicate content get my site penalized on Bing?
Bing says duplicate content does not trigger penalties by itself. However, it can dilute signals, slow updates and make AI systems choose a version you did not intend, so consolidating duplicates with canonical tags or 301 redirects is worthwhile.
Where do I find SEO/GEO errors in Bing Webmaster Tools?
Open Recommendations in the left-hand menu. It shows total errors by severity (High, Moderate and Low), the pages affected, and a table of each SEO/GEO error type. URL Inspection also lists SEO/GEO issues for a single page.
How often should I check Bing Webmaster Tools?
Monthly is enough for most sites, with an extra check after publishing major pages or changing your site structure. Check URL Inspection whenever you publish or fix an important page.
The Honest Summary
In the end, Bing Webmaster Tools is a free dashboard that has quietly become more useful than it used to be. The classic reports still help you with crawling, indexing and search performance, and the new AI Performance reports give you a first-party look at when Copilot and Bing’s AI answers cite you.
However, none of it is a shortcut. Bing says plainly that these are measurement tools, not ranking controls. Set it up once, fix what it flags, and check the AI reports monthly so you can see whether your content improvements are being noticed.
Sources
- Microsoft Bing Webmaster Blog, Start Using Bing Webmaster Tools to Improve Your Site Visibility (June 2025)
- Microsoft Bing Webmaster Blog, Introducing AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools Public Preview (February 2026)
- Microsoft Bing Blog, New AI Visibility Insights in Bing Webmaster Tools: Intents, Topics, Citation Share, Compare (June 2026)
- Microsoft Bing Webmaster Blog, Keeping Content Discoverable with Sitemaps in AI Powered Search (July 2025)
- Microsoft Bing Webmaster Blog, Does Duplicate Content Hurt SEO and AI Search Visibility? (December 2025)
- Microsoft Bing Webmaster Blog, Copilot in Bing Webmaster Tools is Now Available to All Users (March 2025)
- CXL, How to track your AI visibility with Bing
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